31 MARCH 1987
The day of the Oscars. People leave work after lunch in order to get home and watch it on TV at five o’clock. All over the city Oscar parties are beginning in lounges and beside pools. For weeks since the nominations, there has been speculation about possible winners. Turn on the TV and grave pundits are weighing the merits of Bob Hoskins and Paul Newman; open a paper and predictions are being made. Here the Oscars are unavoidable, as competitive and popular as a Cup Final, as dignified and socially important as a Royal Wedding.
A last swim on my back in the hotel pool, watching the sky through the trees before the extensive pleasures of the bathroom where I sip champagne and receive phone calls and gifts. Slipping on my elastic bow-tie I suspect this will be the best time of the day. Outside in the lane the limo is already waiting. By now I have definitely had enough of people saying: It’s enough to be nominated, it’s an honour in itself. By now that isn’t enough: by now I want to win; by now, I know I will win!
When your four-seater black stretch limo pulls up outside the venue all you see on either side of you are other limos, a shimmering sea of shining black metal. When you slide out, you see the high grandstands lining the long walk to the entrance. In these packed grandstands screaming people wave placards with the names of their favourite films written on them. ‘Platoon, Platoon, Platoon!’ someone is yelling. Another person bellows: ‘Room with a View, Room with a View!’ One man holds a placard which says: ‘Read the Bible.’
Inside there are scores of young people, the women in long dresses, the men in tuxedos, who have small signs around their neck saying: ‘The 59th Academy Awards’. They are the seat-fillers. Their role is essential, so that when the cameras sweep across the auditorium there isn’t an empty seat in the place, whereas in fact the sensible people are in the bar watching it all, like everyone else, on TV, only going in to sit down for their bit. In the bar with friends we look out for stars and discuss them: doesn’t Elizabeth Taylor look tiny and doesn’t her head look big — perhaps she’s had all the fat in her body sucked out by the modish vacuum method; doesn’t Bette Davis look shrivelled and fragile; doesn’t Sigourney Weaver look terrific and what was wrong with Jane Fonda and doesn’t Dustin Hoffman always look the same?
When it comes to your section and Shirley MacLaine starts to read out the names of the nominees, you silently run over your speech, remove a speck of dried semen from your collar and squeeze the arms of your seat, ready to propel yourself into the sight of a billion people. You wonder where in the sitting room you’ll put your Oscar, or maybe you should hide it somewhere in case it’s stolen? What does it weigh anyway? You’ll soon find out.
When they make a mistake and don’t read out your name you vow never to attend any such ridiculous ceremony of self-congratulation, exhibitionism and vulgarity again.
1 APRIL 1987
The next day by the pool drinking iced tea, several young producers come by. My impression is that they come to have a look at you, to check you out, to see if there’s anything in you for them. One drives me around the city in his Jag. He asks me if I want to fly to San Francisco for lunch. I ask if there isn’t anywhere a little nearer we can go. He swears eternal love and a contract.
An idea for a story: of someone who inadvertently writes a successful film and lives off its reputation for years, so afraid of ending the shower of financial seductions and blandishments that he never writes anything again.
2 APRIL 1987
I return to find Frears in heaven on the set, sitting with his plimsolls up and gossiping, waiting for a shot to be set up. To ruin his day I tell him about the directors I’ve met in Hollywood and how much they earn and the kind of luxury in which they live. Frears goes into agonies of frustration and jealousy, especially when I mention money. He keeps saying: ‘What am I doing here, fuck all this art, just give me the money!’ This makes Shashi laugh and laugh. But there is another element of neurosis in all this American craziness which is more serious, especially for a film-maker. Since the 1950s the United States is the place where the action is, where things happen, and because the US has the central role in the world which England had in the nineteenth century, America is always present for players in the culture game. Like a mountain that you have to climb or turn away from in disgust, it is an existential challenge involving complicated choices and threats and fear. Do you make an attempt on this height or do you withdraw into your corner? How much of yourself are you prepared to put into this enterprise? Unfortunately for British film-makers, America has been something of a Bermuda Triangle into which many careers have crashed without trace.
They are shooting the party scenes and some kissing between Rani and Vivia; also between Rani and another woman, Margy. I remember Meera (who plays Rani) as a student coming to see me in 1981 at Riverside Studios where we were rehearsing a play for the Royal Court. She asked me if I thought she would ever become an actress. She desperately wanted to go into the theatre, and she wanted to write too. There was some resistance from her parents who, like the parents of many Asian girls, were mostly concerned with her having an arranged marriage. But her enthusiasm and ambition were so obvious, I just told her to stick at it. I wonder what her parents would say if they could see her having a grape removed from between her teeth by the tongue of another actress!
Perhaps these kisses, like the ones between Johnny and Omar in Laundrette –
Each kiss a heart-quake, — for a kiss’s strength
I think it must be reckon’d by its length.
— are subversive in some way. It’s as if they poke social convention and say: There are these other ways to live; there are people who are different, but aren’t guilt-ridden. When I went to see She’s Gotta Have It recently, and it was mostly a young black audience, when the two women kissed the audience screamed with disapproval and repulsion.
We also shoot the scene where Rafi arrives at Sammy’s and Rosie’s flat and finds Rosie’s friends putting a condom on a carrot. Later in the scene Rani and Vivia stand in the centre of the room and kiss, rather ostentatiously. Shashi is agitated by all this and yells for his agent, a taxi, and a first-class flight to Bombay.
God knows what this film will look like when it’s all stuck together. I suppose it’s a film of juxtapositions and contrasts, of different scenes banging hard together. One danger is that the film lacks narrative force and focus; it may be too diffuse.
3 APRIL 1987
Frears and I rejig the scene where Rafi comes home from the party and finds Vivia and Rani in bed. Originally they chase him around the room with lumps of wood and attempt to beat him to a pulp. He barricades himself in the study and climbs out of the window and down the drainpipe. When it comes to shooting it, it doesn’t seem as believable or funny as when I wrote it.
So at lunchtime we rework it. Rafi comes in, finds Vivia and Rani in bed, and is outraged. Abusing them in Punjabi, a row breaks out. So Shashi and Meera work out a couple of pages of abuse to scream at each other. Meera will also throw things at him. It’s terrifying when we come to shoot it, with Meera hammering a piece of wood with nails in it into the door behind which Shashi is cowering! As the scene is all Punjabi abuse we talk about putting sub-titles on it.